This research study looks at the online game Final Fantasy XIV and the players who have participated in the Ceremony of Eternal Bonding, to gain further understanding behind motives for partaking in an online matrimonial service with another player. This study can be relevant for researchers looking into how players interact with events meant to generate intimacy between players. A qualitative semi-structured interview approach was conducted with five couples total to gauge how the event was viewed by each of the pair and its significance to their relationship. The findings of the study could not identify a singular ritualistic effect as part of the ceremony, concluding that its effect stayed within the confines of the game world and did not transfer over to the players real life relationship. The significance of the ceremony was highly dependent on the players’ own engagement with the game and their partner, and while not as transformational as a traditional real-life wedding, it served to solidify social bonds between players and encourage further play within the game.  Further research would be required to assess the details regarding religious symbology present and how gender is performed through the ceremony.

vii, 124 p. / Despite the rise in participation and economic importance of online games as a media phenomenon, ever-growing virtual worlds that seemingly exist as "third places" for social interaction and relationship formation, there is little research on the experiences of gamers with harassment, discrimination, and hate speech. Though changes in the industry serve as evidence of shifting attitudes about female, GLBTQ, and non-white gamers, harassment and use of hate speech based on sex and sexual orientation continue to flourish unchecked in online games. This study explores the prevalence of homophobia and sexism in online games as expressed through "griefing" behavior used to police competitive spaces traditionally dominated by white, heterosexual men. This thesis employs qualitative research methods to illuminate the persisting homophobia, sexism, and racism as experienced by gamers in online console and PC games. / Committee in charge: Carol Stabile, Chair; Pat Curtin, Member; Gabriella Martinez, Member

Η παρούσα έρευνα εντάσσεται στο πεδίο της διερεύνησης των περιβαλλόντων Διαδικτυακών Παιχνιδιών Μεγάλου Πλήθους Παικτών (ΔΠΜΠΠ) σε σχέση με το μαθησιακό δυναμικό τους. Προτείνεται ένα πλαίσιο διερεύνησης της μάθησης σε ΔΠΜΠΠ, στο οποίο συνδυάζεται η γνωστική, η συναισθηματική και η κοινωνική διάσταση της μάθησης και ένα εννοιολογικό μοντέλο που συμπεριλαμβάνει χαρακτηριστικά του παίκτη, της ομάδας, της δραστηριότητας, του σχεδιασμένου και του κοινωνικού περιβάλλοντος, και των αλληλεπιδράσεων μεταξύ των παικτών. Επιπλέον, χαρτογραφείται βάσει αυτού του πλαισίου, η περιοχή των ΔΠΜΠΠ σε σχέση με παράγοντες που αφορούν άμεσα ή έμμεσα την ανάπτυξη διαδικασιών μάθησης. Ακολουθήθηκε Μικτή Μεθοδολογία Έρευνας, με το συνδυασμό ποιοτικών και ποσοτικών δεδομένων, έτσι ώστε να επιτευχθεί η σφαιρικότερη κατανόηση των φαινομένων που αναδύονται. Τα δεδομένα συγκεντρώθηκαν μέσω συμμετοχικής παρατήρησης σε περιβάλλοντα ΔΠΜΠΠ (σημειώσεις πεδίου, βίντεο, εικόνες), μέσω παρατήρησης σε σχετικούς διαδικτυακούς τόπους και fora (συζητήσεις παικτών, οδηγούς παιχνιδιού), από βίντεο καταγραφής παιχνιδιού εθελοντών παικτών, ατομικές και ομαδικές συνεντεύξεις με παίκτες ΔΠΜΠΠ και ερωτηματολόγια. Από την ανάλυση των δεδομένων (ποιοτική, στατιστική) αναδύθηκε ένα σύνολο φαινομένων και παραγόντων που αφορούν δημογραφικά στοιχεία των παικτών, τα κίνητρα παιχνιδιού, τον προσδιορισμό και την ανάδειξη της εμπειρίας, τις δεξιότητες που ασκούνται, τις διαδικασίες και πηγές μάθησης, τις αλληλεπιδράσεις των παικτών, πρακτικές και διαδικασίες που αναπτύσσονται στις ομάδες των παικτών και γενικότερα στην κοινότητα των παικτών, και χαρακτηριστικά σχεδιασμού όπως ο εικονικός χαρακτήρας, οι λειτουργίες υποστήριξης αλληλεπιδράσεων και επικοινωνίας, οι οργανωμένες δραστηριότητες και οι λειτουργίες υποστήριξης της μάθησης. Η επιβεβαιωτική ανάλυση με χρήση μοντέλων δομικών εξισώσεων (structural equation modeling) που πραγματοποιήθηκε στα ποσοτικά δεδομένα της έρευνας επιβεβαίωσε άμεσες και έμμεσες σχέσεις παραγόντων όπως οι κοινωνικές πρακτικές μάθησης, η κοινωνική διάσταση και το μέγεθος της ομάδας, τα εργαλεία υποστήριξης της επικοινωνίας, και η ηλικία και οι προτιμήσεις των παικτών, με την αντίληψη ανάπτυξης δεξιοτήτων μέσω του παιχνιδιού. Η μάθηση φαίνεται να αποτελεί αποτέλεσμα τόσο των σχεδιαστικών επιλογών όσο και των πρακτικών των παικτών που παρατηρούνται σε αυτά. Κίνητρα που σχετίζονται τόσο με το σχεδιασμό του περιβάλλοντος όσο και με τις αλληλεπιδράσεις και σχέσεις μεταξύ των παικτών ενισχύουν τη συμμετοχή, την εμπλοκή και την εκμάθηση γνώσεων και δεξιοτήτων που αφορούν την εξέλιξη στο περιβάλλον. Παράλληλα οι παίκτες δημιουργούν αυθόρμητα ομάδες και κοινότητες μάθησης του παιχνιδιού και συνεργατικής επίτευξης των δραστηριοτήτων. Η κατανόηση των πρακτικών και των διαδικασιών που αναπτύσσονται στο πλαίσιο του παιχνιδιού και η σχέση τους με τις σχεδιαστικές επιλογές του περιβάλλοντος μπορούν να παράσχουν πολύτιμα στοιχεία τόσο για τη συνεργασία των ατόμων σε κατανεμημένες ομάδες μέσω διαδικτυακών εικονικών περιβαλλόντων, όσο και για την ανάπτυξη αποτελεσματικών συνεργατικών μαθησιακών περιβαλλόντων με ή χωρίς την υποστήριξη υπολογιστή. / This study is situated within the research field of learning in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and aims at mapping the field. Through this study, a research framework for the study of learning in MMOGs is proposed. The framework combines the cognitive, the emotional, and the social aspects of learning, and also a conceptual model including features of the players, the groups, the tasks, the designed and the social environment, and the interactions among the players. Furthermore, phenomena and factors directly or indirectly relevant to the support of learning in MMOGs are mapped, based on this framework. A mixed method research approach was employed. The main research methodologies and tools employed were virtual ethnography and questionnaires, for the qualitative and the quantitative approaches respectively. Data were collected through participant observation in different MMOGs, observation in relevant websites and fora, videos of volunteers expert players, individual and group interviews with MMOG players, and questionnaires. Through the combination of qualitative and quantitative data it was possible to investigate and understand the different perspectives of the phenomena emerging. Through the data analysis, a complex set of phenomena and factors emerged, relevant to demographic data of the players, motivations for play, the definition and the emergence of expertise, the skills employed, the learning practices, the interactions of the players, the practices and process in the groups and the community of players, and features of the environment design such as the virtual characters, tools for the support of interactions and communication, the tasks and quests, and functionalities for the support of learning. Confirmatory analysis of the quantitative data through structural equation modeling confirmed the direct and indirect relations of factors such as the social practices for learning, the social aspect and the size of the group, the tools for communication support, and the age and preferences of the players, with the perceptions of skill development through the game. Learning in MMOGs seems to emerge from the combination of both design decisions as well as the practices of the players. Motives relevant to the design of the environment and the interactions among the players engage the players in the acquisition of game-related skills and progress in the environment. Players spontaneously develop groups and communities for learning the environment and collaboratively accomplishing tasks. Understanding of the practices and processes emerging within the framework of the game, and their relations to the design of the environment can provide valuable insights of the way people interact and collaborate in distributed online teams, and also for the development of effective collaborative learning environments with or without the support of computers.

No description available.

Virtual purchases are the main source of revenue for developers of F2P games being a market with expected 17.4 billions of dollars volume in 2019. Despite the broad scope of research of virtual purchases, it is still unclear how the player evaluate non-functional goods. Based on analysis of discussions of virtual decorative items this work what experiences nonfunctional items grants players with and how those experiences discussions reflect in the item’s price.  With the use of Structural Topic Modeling framework this work demonstrates the dimensions of players’ experience in their association with price change on the case of Reddit.com subreddit /r/Dota2. Analysis reveals three main categories of discussions: dimensions of hedonic value, dimensions of social value, expectations mismatch. This work contributes to studies of virtual purchases by decomposing each category into experience dimensions and by revealing the relationship between extracted experience dimensions and items price.

Esse trabalho tem como finalidade a análise de aspectos econômicos e sociais do mundo sintético World of Warcraft, um Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). A escolha desse jogo se dá pela sua popularidade no mundo, contando com mais de 11 milhões de jogadores segundo dados divulgados pela Blizzard Entertainment, em outubro de 2008. A etnografia, que se desenvolveu online realizada por meio de dez personagens especialmente criados para integrar o jogo nas terras virtuais de Azeroth, observa os aspectos de desenvolvimento da comunidade de jogadores e dos mecanismos de governança da Blizzard, constitui uma introdução a jogos desse gênero, com o objetivo de ressaltar a dinâmica econômica que se estabelece nesse complexo universo digital. O jogar é uma fonte de valor e o lúdico tem a sua própria economia. / This work aims to analyze economic and social aspects of the synthetic world entitled World of Warcraft, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). This choice was made because of the popularity of this game around the world, counting 11 million players according to Blizzard Entertainments data published in October 2008. The etnography was developed online by ten avatars speacially created to take part of the world inside the virtual land of Azeroth, and observes the developing aspects of the player communities and their relationship with Blizzard governance while it also constitutes an introduction to this genre of game which highlights the economic dynamics of this complex digital universe. Play is a source of value and the ludicity has its own economy.

This dissertation examines the impact of playing video games on social relationships. The main goal of the research is to find out how relationships differ between gamers and non-gamers. The quality of relationships is examined via Furman's and Buhrmester's Network of relationship inventory. The values are compared according to the gaming status. Apart from the basic groups I compared some other groups such as online and offline gamers, men and women or gamers who prefer playing alone and players who play with their friends. According to the inventory findings the relationship qualities of gamers and non-gamers do not differ significantly. Comparison of some other groups brought some interesting relationship differences among groups of men and women and, also, a correlation between the increasing average game time and decreasing quality of relationship with family members was observed.

Nos últimos anos Jogos Online Massivamente Multijogadores (MMOG) têm se expandido em popularidade e investimento, influenciado, especialmente, pela evolução da conexão residencial (conexões mais rápidas a preços mais baixos). Com o crescimento dessa demanda, surgem problemas na utilização da arquitetura cliente-servidor, normalmente utilizada em jogos comerciais. Entre as arquiteturas alternativas de suporte a MMOGs estão as arquiteturas peer-to-peer. Porém essas arquiteturas apresentam problemas relativos a segurança, problemas esses que possuem, muitas vezes, soluções de baixo desempenho, sendo impraticáveis em jogos reais. Entre os problemas de segurança mais significativos para MMOGs encontra-se o cheating, ou a ação que um ou mais jogador toma para burlar as regras em favor próprio. A preocupação com cheating agravase quando o efeito desse cheating pode causar danos irreversíveis à economia virtual e, potencialmente, afetar todos os jogadores. O presente trabalho faz uso de uma divisão celular do mundo virtual para restringir o impacto de um dado cheating a uma única célula, evitando que este se propague. Para tanto é realizada uma classificação do estado do jogador e utiliza-se uma técnica de detecção de cheating para cada uma das classificações. Foram realizados experimentos através de simulação para testes de aplicabilidade do modelo e análise de desempenho e acuracidade. Os testes indicam que o modelo proposto consegue, de forma eficaz, realizar a proteção da economia virtual, impedindo que a ocorrência de um cheating atinja todos os jogadores. / In the past few years, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) grew in both popularity and investment. This growth has been influenced by the evolution of residential connection (faster and cheaper connections). With the demand, some limitations imposed by the client-server architecture becomes more significant. Peer-to-peer architectures aim to solve those problems by distributing the game among several computers. However, those solutions usually lack security, or presents low performance. Among the problems, cheating can be considered the most significant to MMOGs. Cheating can be defined as the action taken by a player when this action is against the rules. This may be aggravated when this action can cause irreversible damage to the virtual economy and, potentially, affect all players in the virtual world. This work’s goal is to restrict the cheating impact using a cellular world division. The proposal is to restrict the cheating in a limited virtual space, preventing the propagation. A state classification is presented, and different cheating detection techniques are presented to each element of this classification. Simulation is used to make the experiments aiming to test the performance and accuracy of the proposal. Results indicate that the proposed solution can efficiently protect the virtual economy, restraining the effects of a cheating occurrence to a small portion of the virtual world.

L’application de jeu en ligne massivement multijoueurs fournit une grandepartie du trafic Internet global. Le trafic est généralement composé d’unepetite partie de données utiles encapsulé dans des segments TCP, entrainantun volume élevé d’entêtes transmis via le réseau. Cela implique: 1) la tailledes paquets est trop petite pour un routage efficace et; 2) la bande passanterequise par le serveur augmente. Par conséquent, il est nécessaire de trouverdes techniques de transmission et de routage plus efficaces afin de réduire levolume de trafic et augmenter l’efficacité du réseau permettant de prendre encharge le nombre croissant des joueurs. D’autre part, la qualité d’expérience(QoE) dans le contexte des jeux en ligne est fortement liée à la consistance.Cette consistance est influencée par la qualité de service (QoS) offerte parle réseau, principalement en termes de délai, de gigue et d’ordre de paquets.Par conséquent, une solution qui améliore ces paramètres aidera à satisfairedavantage de joueurs et à améliorer la qualité de service.L’objectif de cette thèse est de proposer des solutions pour améliorerla qualité d’expérience des jeux en ligne en augmentant la consistance devue, en réduisant les délais et en augmentant l’efficacité du réseau. Pour leproblème de consistance, nous proposons une topologie de réseau cyclique.Cette topologie ordonnée facilite la mise en place des procédures de gestionet de contrôle de la transmission pour imposer un ordre causal entre tousles joueurs. Concernant le délai et l’efficacité du réseau, certains ont proposé l’application de la technique du tunnel, compression et multiplexage(TCM). Cependant, les paquets transmis avec TCM sont plus grands queceux d’origine, ce qui nécessite plus de temps pour les transmettre et augmente le risque de saturation au niveau des fils d’attente. Nous proposonsl’utilisation de la technique de codage réseau (NC) qui permet d’augmenterle débit dans certaines conditions de topologies et de routage. Cette technique permet aux nœuds intermédiaires d’encoder les paquets qu’ils reçoivent plutôt que d’effectuer une simple fonction de stockage et de transfert. Celapeut réduire la charge de trafic, réduire les délais et augmenter l’efficacité duréseau.Dans cette thèse, nous proposons des modifications pour améliorer latechnique TCM et nous évaluons ses performances. De plus, nous proposonsd’ajouter le concept de partition des joueurs et de changer la topologie d’unarbre à une forêt. Nous étudions ensuite la topologie cyclique. Nous concevons un protocole de routage optimisé sur une topologie en cycle baséesur la technique de codage réseau. Puis, nous évaluons ses performances entermes de délai, de charge et d’ordre. Les résultats montrent que l’utilisationdu codage NC permet de réduire la charge et le nombre de paquets transmis, garantir un ordre de paquet par période et de réduire le délai. Eneffet, on peut gagner jusqu’à 14% de latence avec notre protocole par rapport à un protocole de routage optimisé sans codage réseau. Par la suite,nous proposons un scénario de mise en pratique de cette solution sur une infrastructure Device-to-Device. Nous validons les limites théoriques du délaien utilisant des simulations réseau et nous discutons ensuite des contraintespratiques qui s’imposent lors de l’implémentation dans un réseau réel. Finalement, nous proposons des solutions pour ces contraintes. / The application of massively multiplayer online games provides a large partof the global internet traffic. The traffic is typically encapsulated in TCPsegments of small size information (the so called payload) resulting in a highvolume of headers transmitted through the network. This implies the following: 1) the packets’ size is too small for efficient routing and; 2) thebandwidth required by the server seems to be increasing. Therefore, it isnecessary to find more efficient transmission and routing techniques to reduce the traffic’s volume and to increase the network’s efficiency in orderto support the growing number of players. On the other hand, Quality ofExperience (QoE) in the context of online games is strongly influenced byconsistency. This consistency is influenced by the quality of service (QoS) offered by the network, mainly in terms of delay, jitter and order of the packets.As a result, a solution that enhances these parameters will help in satisfyingmore players and subsequently improving QoE.The goal of this thesis is to propose solutions to enhance the QoE of onlinegames by increasing the consistency of view, reducing the delay and increasing the efficiency of the network. For consistency, we propose a cyclic networktopology. This ordered topology facilitates the implementation of transmission management and control procedures to impose a causal order betweenall players. As for the delay and the efficiency problem, some have proposed the application of Tunneling, Compression and Multiplexing (TCM)technique. However, the transmitted packets with TCM are larger than theoriginal ones, which requires more delay to transmit them and increases therisk of congestion. We propose the use of the Network Coding technique(NC) which makes it possible to increase the bit rate of the network undercertain topological and routing conditions. This technique allows intermediate nodes to encode the data they receive rather than perform a simple”store and forward” function. It can reduce the traffic load, reduce the delay and increase the network’s efficiency.In this thesis, we propose some modifications to enhance the TCM technique and evaluate its performance. Besides, we propose to add the playerspartition approach and change the topology from a tree to a forest. Afterwards, we investigate the cyclic topology. We design an optimized routingprotocol over a cycle topology based on the network coding technique andevaluate its performance in terms of delay and order. The results show thatby using NC coding, one can gain up to 14% of latency over an optimizedrouting protocol for the cycle topology without the use of network coding.Afterwards, we propose a practical implementation scenario of this solutionover a device-to-device (D2D) infrastructure. We finally validate the theoretical limits of delay using network simulations and discuss a number ofpractical constraints.

Tradicionalmente, utiliza-se um servidor central para prover suporte a MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games, ou jogos online maciçamente multijogador), nos quais o número de participantes é da ordem de dezenas de milhares. Muitos trabalhos foram realizados com o intuito de criar um modelo de suporte completamente descentralizado, par-a-par, para este tipo de aplicação, minimizando o custo de manutenção da sua infraestrutura, mas algumas questões críticas persistem. Exemplos de problemas do modelo de suporte par-a-par são: vulnerabilidade a trapaça, sobrecarga da banda de envio dos pares e dificuldade para manter a consistência da simulação entre os diferentes participantes. Neste trabalho, é proposta a utilização de nodos de baixo custo geograficamente distribuídos, operando como um servidor distribuído de jogo. O modelo de distribuição proposto e alguns trabalhos relacionados também são apresentados. Para tratar o custo de comunicação imposto aos servidores, foi projetado aqui um novo refinamento para a técnica de gerenciamento de interesse, reduzindo significativamente a largura de banda necessária ao jogo. Foram realizadas simulações utilizando o simulador ns-2, comparando diferentes algoritmos de área de interesse. Os resultados demonstram que a nossa proposta é a que tem a menor utilização de largura de banda, com uma redução em 33,10% do tráfego máximo, e em 33,58% do tráfego médio, quando comparada com outros algoritmos de gerenciamento de interesse. Além disso, em uma arquitetura de servidor distribuído para MMOGs, com recursos heterogêneos, os nodos servidores podem ser facilmente sobrecarregados pela alta demanda dos jogadores por atualizações de estado. Neste trabalho, é proposto também um esquema de balanceamento de carga que utiliza o tráfego de rede como a carga a balancear entre os servidores e tem como objetivos principais: alocar a carga nos servidores proporcionalmente à capacidade de cada um e reduzir tanto quanto possível o overhead introduzido pela própria distribuição. O esquema de balanceamento é dividido em três fases: seleção local de servidores para participarem, o balanceamento em si e o posterior refinamento da divisão de carga. Quatro algoritmos foram propostos: ProGReGA, ProGReGA-KH, ProGReGA-KF e BFBCT. Destes, o ProGReGA foi o que introduziu o menor overhead de todos e o ProGReGA-KF foi o que se mostrou mais eficiente para reduzir o número de migrações de jogadores entre servidores. / Traditionally, a central server is used to provide support to MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games), where the number of participants is in the order of tens of thousands. Much work has been done trying to create a fully peer-to-peer model to support this kind of application, in order to minimize the maintenance cost of its infra-structure, but critical questions remain. Examples of the problems relative to peer-to-peer MMOG support systems are: vulnerability to cheating, overload of the upload links of the peers and difficulty to maintain consistency of the simulation among the participants. In this work, it is proposed the utilization of geographically distributed lower-cost nodes, working as a distributed server to the game. The distribution model and some related works are also presented. To address the communication cost imposed to the servers, we specify a novel refinement to the area of interest technique, significantly reducing the necessary bandwidth. Simulations have been made with ns-2, comparing different area of interest algorithms. The results show that our approach achieves the least bandwidth utilization, with a 33.10% maximum traffic reduction and 33.58% average traffic reduction, when compared to other area of interest algorithms. Besides, in a distributed MMOG server architecture, with heterogeneous resources, the server nodes may become easily overloaded by the high demand from the players for state updates. In this work, we also propose a load balancing scheme, which considers the network traffic as the load to balance between the servers, and it has the following main objectives: allocate load on the servers proportionally to the power of each one of them and reduce as much as possible the overhead introduced by the distribution itself. It is is divided in three phases: local selection of servers, balancing and refinement. Four algorithms were proposed: ProGReGA, ProGReGA-KH, ProGReGA-KF and BFBCT. From these, ProGReGA has proved to be the best for overhead reduction and ProGReGA-KF is the most suited for reducing player migrations between servers.